The 2020 Burning Man Bar is open

[Popeye]

So why is it I'm fine to walk or bike all around BRC on a cool 95 F day on the playa, but now on a 95 F 22 % RH day at home, walking to the corner store and back feels like I'm going die...

Maybe the humidity? Your sweat evaporates faster on playa. Maybe the distractions?

[Canoe]

So why is it I'm fine to walk or bike all around BRC on a cool 95 F day on the playa, but now on a 95 F 22 % RH day at home, walking to the corner store and back feels like I'm going die...

Maybe the humidity? Your sweat evaporates faster on playa. Maybe the distractions?

My best guess was I'm a wuss, except where BRC is distracting me.

[^Rhino!]

To canoe, burner von braun, and lucky 420:

Thanks, all for your support. It means a great deal in these trying times. I'm basically on 24-7 lockdown with COVID-19, being in a high-risk group where some really bad shit is likely to happen to me if I'm exposed. With the death of my Mom in April and the surgery I had last week, you might think that I'm having a hard time staying afloat and mentally sane. Wrong. TTID taught me the value of my fertile imagination,my immense library of books (over 2000 at last count not including periodicals), and the value and love behind the phrase "I will survive".

Come closer around the potbellied stove sos I can tell you a story of love and hope.

I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2007. With my high-risk high-impact lifestyle I moped at first, thinking the quality of my life was kaput. Luckily, I was born with a curiosity in needing to know the answers to the questions confronting me in school and in life. And I saw the movie the Replacements. By the time Burningman came about in 2008, I had lost 50 pounds and turned my life and habits around.

In the film, pro football has had a player strike and walkout during the season. The fictitious Washington Sentinels bring in a new coach (played by Gene Hackman) who puts together a team of misfits and also-ran types in the hopes of reaching the playoffs. After losing a game, they're met at a local bar by the striking payers, who get mouthy. a knockdown dragout bar fight ensues, and the replacement players are hauled off to jail. In jail a conversation ensues, and as the coach comes to bail them out he finds the entire team dancing the electric slide to the tune of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive". Critical to the team is the recognition that they have become a team, led by the quarterback Shane Falco (played by Keanu Reeves). In the end, the team makes the playoffs and succeeds.

2008 saw me attending Burningman for the first time. I thrived, and even was asked back by Gothalot, my first camp director, Gothalot in 2009 put me in charge of the camp LNT effort in my second year. I was give two women to wprk with. They were grumbling about getting back to Reno for their plane flight back to Germany on time. I told them the story of the replacements and how if we came together as a team, we could get the job done faster than the three hours they were estimating and moaning about. They wanted it done in an hour. WE got it done in 20 minutes. They hopped in their rented RV, and after tears were shed and good-byes tendered they drove off. I went to my truck, Planet Earth disco still had a sound system up. And then I heard Gloria Gaynor's song "I Will Survive".

My reaction was the only appropriate one. Before driving away all alone I deanced the electric slide in the dust of the Black Rock playa.

The location and event still awe me to this day as a place of magic.

I will survive.

[Savannah]

My reaction was the only appropriate one. Before driving away all alone I deanced the electric slide in the dust of the Black Rock playa.

The location and event still awe me to this day as a place of magic.

I will survive.

Love it!

So glad you're doing well. Pet Katy for me! I so love cats.


. . . I'm personally surfacing after the worst part of my job, annually speaking. June and July are always chaos, and while I am grateful as HELL that I can work from home (ugh! . . . SO grateful) . . . It's been really hard to run the things I need to run at a distance. I worry that if I can't be perfect and seamless in the middle of this ridiculousness, budget cuts will take me out. (And with it, my health insurance, yikes). So today I literally walked 5.5 miles to sneak into my office after 5pm to complete a few things. I hadn't been in for 4 months, and there were a few weird, straggling things that couldn't wait. My boss didn't want me to, but I had a lot of good reasons.

Then I walked 3 miles back and my feet got sad, so I caved after that and caught my first bus in 4 months the rest of the way. It was eerie.

[^Rhino!]

I promise to pet Katy for you!

And just like me, there's even MORE to this wonderful story that serves as a testament to my commitment to burning bright each and every day.

It started with a geology field camp in 1986. Our itinerary led us to the Grand Canyon, where we camped in the inner canyon at Phantom Ranch. I've always been into the history of places and I learned the story of John Wesley Powell. Powell is widely revered as the 'father of the USGS', as the first man who recognized the need for water out west, and as the first white man to traverse the Colorado River through the canyon. This was all after the Civil War, where Powell had lost an arm at The battle of Shiloh (April 1862). Imagine going down the raging torrents of the river in a WOODEN rowboat, before Glen Canyon dam was constructed. Powell obviously had big brass ones that clanked when he walked.

In any case, as a geologist-historian, I've been all over the US in search of his historical imprint. I visited Shiloh one cold Christmas Day, and heard the voices of the ghosts who fought on that hallowed ground near 'bloody pond'. I found the location of Powell's battery at Vicksburg (May-July 1864) I went to Cape Girardeau and examined Fort 'D' which Powell designed. Finally, we can fast forward to my travel to Burningman in 2010. On the way there, I spotted a burner in need of help and stopped to aid them. It turned out they were with Planet Earth disco (see previous post). They were headed there from Des Moines, Iowa. The driver had stage 4 lung cancer and was going to BRC 'for the last time'. It hit me pretty hard at that point, feeling helpless when I wanted to help him. I got as far as Green River, Wyoming.

I was ready to turn around and head for home. Instead, I got out at the city park there to walk around and clear my head. There, I ran my hands over a granite marker which commemorated Powell's trip down the Colorado a hundred years earlier. It reminded me that Powell never quit, despite the odds.

" I will survive"
"If success is possible, never quit despite the odds."

Lessons from BRC that I carry tp this day.